Author: Tom Fitzpatrick

Life

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I noticed an uptick in the number of viewers I had on my blog since last December. The number of viewers have doubled and I am promoting pretty much the same way, in fact, since I have seen more viewers I have actually been promoting my blog less — so why are their more viewers?

While I would like to think that the world is finally catching on to my verve and wit, I found the doubling a little suspect. This prompted me to give a deep dive into the statistics that World Press provides for me. What I learned was perplexing. See below:

Most of my new viewing traffic comes from Hong Kong and Singapore. I know no one from Singapore and only a few people from Hong Kong, and I am betting neither person is a big reader of my blog, so what is happening in Hong Kong and Singapore?

Don’t get my wrong I would be happy to entertain more viewers from those places, I just think it is unlikely that this is where I would catch on as opposed to North American and Europe where I actually know people who might read my work.

Could this be the result of AI bots located in those locations reading everything on the net including my humble blog and then pumping up my statistics without involving an actual human being. This is my suspicion, does anybody else have a good explanation? And, does

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I have been lifting light weights and strength exercises on and off for the past 50 years. I say light because whenever I really made a go for it and started lifting heavier weight or doing significantly more sit ups, I always seemed to injure myself and then have to stop for months at a time before returning.

When I was young and lost track of the number of reps I had taken, I would go back to the last number I remember saying — just to keep myself honest. I wanted to make sure I got in all of my reps even if I went over the actual number I needed.

Now that I have gotten older I have discovered a better way to handle the lost count problem. I think surely I am ahead of the last number I remembered, so I take a wild stab at where I left off and continue from there. I don’t want to do more reps than I should. This wisdom of age strikes again.

Keep this strategy in mind next time you lose count.

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I am sure there are more awful human beings than Alex Jones but, as far as I can see, they have the good sense to keep their mouths shut to hide how awful they are. Unfortunately Alex Jones is an asshole who can’t keep his mouth shut . So here is Alex Jones, even after losing law suits where he questions the shootings at the Sandy Hook School, spouting the same unsubstantiated garbage about it being a false flag operation from anti-gun rights organization. He is doing this even after changing his story in court and saying that Sandy Hook shootings did happen as the police claimed. Doesn’t this make him an admitted liar.

Never mind. Now, since he is losing his empire to pay the Sandy Hook parents for his lies, he is going back to spreading his lies about Sandy Hook. Yes, he is accusing 20 sets of parents of willingly sacrificing their first grader in order that their deaths would galvanize sympathy for anti-gun legislation. I don’t know about you but I don’t know of many, if any, parents who make such a bargain — much less 20 sets.

And it gets worse, because Alex Jones so passionately spread these vile lies, his listeners believed him and began to harass the grieving parents of these children in order to get at the truth. Parents who lost their children had to listen to people telling them that they are lying about how their child died. Who would encourage people to behave like that. Oh, that’s right, Alex Jones.

I only wished I believed in Hell because I would surely love to see him rotting there. If anyone deserves an eternity of the flaming fires of Hell, it is surely Alex Jones.

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Russell Brand recently copped to sleeping with a 16 year old when he was 30. WTF. Thank God he clears up the legality of it all by reminding us that the age of consent in the UK is 16. So, at least, as far as the law is concerned, he is in the clear. Whew. I was concerned.

I think if I was a man under investigation for rape, as Brand is, that I would be a bit more careful about sharing any information about my murky sexual past. That Brand willingly goes there is both surprising and telling.

In this modern Me Too environment, why would someone so stupidly admit to something that he knew would receive a hostile reception? Why would be bring up the age of consent otherwise? This gets him off the hook, sort of, for a morally dubious decision. Unfortunately for Brand, the facts remain the same, he was a 30 year old man and he knowingly took advantage of a 16 year old. The age of consent in the UK only matters to the police and the courts, the rest of us are free to judge him however we want to and, of course, have.

Tellingly, he thought he could explain it away without getting into any real trouble. Once people knew the age of consent, and that the 16 year old girl consented, and he now knows he was wrong to exploit her, he thought people would think what an evolved man Russell Brand is. Instead, people are coming to a different conclusion. Brand is a bit of an asshole and a not very bright asshole at that. How does he know the girl was 16? Did he check her passport details? A 15 year old can look a lot like a 16 year old and that would change his whole consent argument now wouldn’t it?

I’m not trying to encourage criminal activity but the one thing I do know is if you are under criminal investigation, you keep your trap shut and leads me to wonder if Brand had fallen completely under the spell of celebrity culture. He was a spent force in celebrity world and the only way for someone like Brand to grab headlines is to behave outrageously in order to regain that sad perceived glory.

Well, it worked if that was his goal, otherwise what a stupid asshole.

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One of my new ways to waste time is to search for new music. At least new music to me. So I google 100 best songs and you get a lot of different people’s list of favorite songs, then I pick songs that appeal to me and listen. Lately I have been focusing on outliers, songs that aren’t on everyone’s list as opposed to the ones that are on everyone’s list (think Bohemian Rhapsody by Queen).

This is how I found Paul Weller’s “You Do Something to Me.” His name wasn’t familiar to me and so I looked him and found out he had played in the band the Jam which I was vaguely familiar with. Given I liked “A Town Called Malice,” the one song I knew by the Jam, I decided to see why someone would put it on their top 100 list.

Despite finding the lyrics kind of sappy and confusing, it is a doomed love song — she does something for him but it just isn’t working for her. His voice is soulful and sad and somehow you want to hear his silly story even though you know it isn’t going to end well. Weller transform the song by giving it an emotional wallop it doesn’t quite deserve.

Oddly enough, I read that “You Do Something to Me” is a popular song at weddings. This may be the wrong point in the marriage to play it. A far better time would be the day the divorce papers were signed and you are sitting alone with a glass of wine looking at the photo album of better times. Regardless of your timing, you might enjoy a listen. I did.

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Eating fruits and vegetables has been linked to lung cancer.

Well, fuck it. I mean this is it. There is a link to cancer in absolutely everything we do. Might as well eat all the chocolate chip cookies I can get my grubby little paws on then.

What I find irritating about this is I think we humans have deluded ourselves into thinking there is some magic formula that will get us around sickness and death. And Mother Nature, like Lucy holding the football for Charlie Brown to kick, keeps coming back with her irrefutable answer — fooled you yet again.

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It always irritates me when I read articles like Barton Swaim in the Wall Street Journal (paywall though you can get a free article if you get a log in). Swaim thinks that the adherence to the Protestant Work Ethic is in decline and he pins this decline on Lyndon Johnson’s War on Poverty and every other helpful thing ever done for poor people since then because the poor have no reason to work hard when they can get so much free shit from the government. The USA has just made it too easy for poor people to goof off instead of work.

Those retched poor people are just too God damn powerful and greedy as opposed to those put upon rich people who everybody keeps picking on. Swaim’s thinking is that we need to make the poor more miserable than they already are. They will never understand the value of hard work because they are given too much. His search for a villain in this story stops directly where his prejudices end — the poor.

Where to begin? First, we have to take him at his word that people would rather not work. It is mostly word of mouth drivel about adult men living with their parents, COVID subsidies and Somali refugees. Some of these may be problems but Swaim doesn’t really give much insight on how these unrelated problems have undermined the Protestant Work Ethic or how they are related to Johnson’s War on Poverty. He is flinging them out like a mad ape throwing shit at patrons at a zoo. He is hoping one of them will hit the target. They don’t. Adult men living off their parents, I am afraid to say, are living off their parents and not the government. COVID subsidies are long gone and no longer an issue. Which leaves the Somali refugee scandal which may or may not be a problem (it is still under investigation) but hardly a reason to eliminate a whole system. You wouldn’t call for the end of Corporate Capitalism based on the bad behavior of Bernie Madoff or Enron now would you? Why apply a different standard to government assistance.

Swaim also mythologizes life in pre-War on Poverty America. It was not sweetness and light. It was grinding poverty for most Americans — with estimated poverty rates between 40 to 60 % of the American people. And I am not talking the Great Depression either because even before the Great Depression an awful lot of Americans lived in poverty. It was only after Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal that this rate came down to about 20% in 1960. After Johnson’s War on Poverty, the poverty rate now hovers around 11%. So government services lifted many poor Americans out of poverty.

Next lets look at those patriotic Capitalists who, in order to avoid paying higher American wages, brought to you, thank you very much by unions, fled the country in order to pay lower wages to workers outside the country. These “good” Americans pulled the rug out from under high wage workers in order to make more money with absolutely no concern for how this affected their now out-of-work employees. Nobody, by the way, stopped them. They were free to undermine union workers wages and unions themselves with nary a complaint from anyone.

This left getting a good education which has turned out to be bit of a trap for some. Many took out loans for educations that turned out to have very little benefit in the job market. People came out of college owing a bundle of money with little chance of recouping on their investment. So much for a home and a family.

Now AI is whittling away at the functions in the better jobs so that workers even in medicine, law and engineering are being threatened. What type of jobs does Swaim have to offer these young people with the advent of AI? Even a $15 minimum wage is insufficient to pay the rent in most states. The lowest possible wage can’t provide a meaningful income for survival. Some companies like Walmart and McDonald’s encourage their workers to use government benefits to supplement the low wages they pay their employees.. People actually are working full time jobs while receiving government assistance. Then these same assholes are trying to take away these benefits from full time workers because it discourages them from hard work.

Fuck them. Talking about how government benefits discourages people from fully engaging in the Protestant Work Ethic is just bull shit. People can see their reality. Hard work without a pay off is a meaningless exercise. I am surprised that so many low wage workers are still punching a time clock.

If only the poor worked harder, the world would be a better place. Maybe for the rich but there is little evidence that it would help the poor. The corollary to this rule is that rich people need even more money or else they will stop working so hard. Do you see the problem here? Rich people need more money are they won’t work while poor people need less money are they won’t work. Genius.

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The other day, I was discussing how violence seems to be a part of human nature. There is something about violence that attracts humans both to participate and to watch. It is an irrational strong urge and, because of that, must be fed in some way. My speculation there got some confirmation today when I saw this post about chimps getting violent. Scientists are mystified on why these chimps, who were co-operating in the past, now were attacking each other. There is some talk about resource sharing but nothing seems to explain this sudden violent turn. On the face of it, it seems irrational.

The problem here might be trying to find a rational basis for this violence. Maybe there just isn’t any good reason other than animals sometimes have to express themselves violently and that, humans being mammals, the same irrational instinct is present in us. Why do football players continue to play football when there is substantial evidence that playing the game damages their future health. People stopped smoking after they learned more about tobacco, why hasn’t the same turnaround occurred with football.

Which makes me think our whole strategy on violence might be misdirected. Our base assumption is that nobody wants violence and, logically, this makes sense. Who wants to have their bodies beaten up? Who wants to watch this type of game? But, the truth is: people do want to participate and they do want to watch. Perhaps what we need to do is find a way that people can express these violent urges without, or at least limiting, the physical pain to other humans.

I know that violent video games have a bad reputation for the dehumanization of people but it is infinitely preferable to killing and maiming actual human beings. What I am saying is maybe we need to expand our tools in dealing with violent behavior. Yes people shouldn’t want to hurt other people however our very nature might predispose us to some forms of violence. How do we do we deal more effectively with that reality?

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I wrote about this the other day so I thought I had vented my spleen sufficiently but then I stumbled across Erick Erickson’s lame rejoinder regarding Trump’s threat to destroy a civilization and the spleen became inflamed again. Erickson rather blithely said he would have preferred that Trump had not said it but if it was between that and Trans Recognition Day then well wink wink nudge nudge. Get it.

Fuck you, Erick Erickson. How was this the choice? The choice was between Trump making a measured comment about the American involvement in a war (or military operation if you will) and one where he threatens to destroy a whole civilization. On Easter — the Christians holiest day. Trans people were no where in the equation until Erickson dragged them out.

This is yet another example of Trump supporters dismissing Trump’s terrible behavior. I don’t like what he said but it is better than the alternate. The alternate, in this case, is a president savvy enough to talk reasonably about a dangerous situation that he is responsible for. What needs to be addressed is Trump’s statement. Erickson needs to give critical feedback without the additional little zinger about Trans people which suggests, I might add, that there are no limits to Erickson’s support of Trump. This might have been a good time for Erickson to stipulate these limits instead of giving him limitless support for fear of what was it? Oh, yeah, Trans Recognition Day.

Trump has always been an asshole and will continue to be an asshole. He is what he is. But his supporters are a different story. To continue to support a careless president is madness particularly as he continues his dangerous meanderings through the world. Republicans and Conservatives must draw the line because they hold the power in Congress to stop him.

Just for the record, and I can’t believe I am suggesting this, the alternate is J.D. Vance. When that weasel starts looking good to me, and he is, you know we are in desperate times.

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A few weeks back, I was talking with a woman who complained that she never knows what she is hearing is actually true. She hears something and a few days later learns that it was “fake news.” This is even more troubling when it is news that she relays to other people only to find out later that it was indeed “fake news.” I understand her concern here because I sometimes do the same thing with the same embarrassing results.

My friend blamed the internet as the source of the problem and, at first, I agreed with her. Yes, it would be nice if people only passed on truthful information. It would certainly make life easier but this isn’t neither new nor startling behavior. People were bull shitting long before the internet existed. The problem, as it has always been, is human behavior where there has been a long history of people trading in rumors, half-truths and just general bull shit.

In fact, the internet gives me the power to check on something the moment I hear it and, then, being able to determine whether this is indeed true. Since I have become more diligent at verifying information, I am astounded by how much bad information is passing through the world — even from people who I would normally trust. I can’t tell you how many times I have learned that the information was total bull shit, more often partial bull shit or the irritating taking someone’s statement out of context which is bull shit dressed up as truth.

The lesson here, as it was in the past, is verify before passing on. It is a hard lesson but a valuable one. Only you can prevent bull shit spreading.